The present invention improves the type of conveyor disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 4,143,760, granted Mar. 13, 1979, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,184,587, granted Jan. 22, 1980, both to Olaf A. Hallstrom.
Basically, the reciprocating floor conveyor to which this invention relates includes at least one group of at least three elongated floor members and a hydraulic drive system which operates to drive the floor members in unison in the desired conveying direction and then to individually retract the floor members sequentially. During each retraction, there are more floor members stationary than moving, so the load does not move backwards.
The floor members are individually supported and guided by means which include elongated metal guide beams and a plurality of plastic slide bearings which are spaced apart along the guide beams. Specifically, the guide beams are welded to transverse support frame beams and a plastic slide bearing is provided at each point of connection of a guide beam to a transverse support beam.
Problems have been encountered because the hydraulic components of the hydraulic drive system are offset vertically below the guide beams and bearings. As a result, forces are created in the drive/guide system, particularly when some sort of resistance to free sliding movement of all floor members is encountered, which tend to break the slide bearings and/or guide beams loose. The principal object of the present invention is to provide a solution to problems of this type which have been experienced by equipment of the configurations disclosed by the above-identified patents.
Earlier forms of reciprocating floor conveyors are disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 2,629,504, granted in February of 1953 to Peterson; by U.S. Pat. No. 2,973,856, granted in March of 1961 to Brooks; by U.S. Pat. No. 3,534,875, granted in October of 1970 to Hallstrom; and by West German Patent Pubication No. 1,296,087, published in May of 1969. These patents are not particularly pertinent to the subject invention and require no further comment.